Where I talk about knitting and other things

It’s BAAAaaaaaack

Okay, so it’s difficult to type the equivalent of a sing-song voice with text, but just imagine that’s what I’m trying to do in the title above.

The project I’m referring to is of course my Shawl of Doom (my project), more commonly known as Granny Cheyne’s Shetland Shawl (pattern).Funny thing is, I’ve referred to it as the “shawl of doom” so often that everyone at both my knit groups knows exactly what project I’m referring to. I even enabled someone else to buy the yarn and pattern to make one though I don’t know if she’s actually started it yet (or if she’ll ever knit it for that matt

That’s the shawl pinned out at it’s current point. Row 66 of 102 for the inner border of the shawl. After I finish that part I still have 100 rows of center square to knit, but after that I’m done. So that works out to 136 rows remaining on the shawl. Total. However 36 of those rows are approximately a gagillion stitches long (actually at the end the last row is 564 sts long, the border started at 684 sts total – but that’s still a lot!), thankfully the center rows are only 128 sts long so they should fly in comparison to the border sts.

Oh and each row takes me about an hour due to the complexity (seriously complicated charts with the pattern worked on both sides).

Though, of course, I took the longer way to do the border because you can knit the 4 borders (it’s a square shawl by the way) separately and then seam them, or you can knit them in the round to avoid seaming. I took the second option, hence the super long rows.The only seaming I’ll have to do this way is 16 sts on the very edge for the edging, and sewing the center square into the center of the shawl.

My only conundrum after that? Where in the world I’m going to pin it out to block. I’m using a yarn that will probably grow (it’s alpaca) so I’m looking at at least a 3 foot by 3 foot shawl to pin out. This will be fun!

And when am I hoping to get this done by? Well. the sooner the better really but my ultimate goal is to enter it in a fair this fall so I need to make their submission deadline (which still hasn’t been announced, ugh) so sooner rather than later is the modus opperandi of this shawl.

Besides, it’s been on the needles since January 1, 2013 – that’s 2 1/2 years. Really, I should finish the thing at this point.

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In other news, I managed to do a few rows of the baby blanket last night so that’s coming along nicely, though it looks more like a rather odd scarf at the moment instead of a baby blanket, but it’ll start looking like a blanket pretty soon probably (hopefully).

Yes I took a picture of the blanket on a cat tower. My floor options are either beige carpet or white-ish linoleum. Our couch is brown and our bedspread is red. The balcony is usually an option but the humidity today made me not want to go out even for a quick picture session.

On an unrelated note, I need better photo-editing software than the basic Microsoft stuff. One of these days I’ll shell out for Photoshop (and no I don’t like a lot of the free things that are similar, I’ve tried a lot of them).

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I also have 14 projects total on the needles/hooks. Two are long term scrap projects so they shouldn’t really count but that still leaves a full dozen projects that I have on the go. I think I need to finish a few. The top of the list includes the following:

Granny Cheyne (see rant above)

July Socks

Baby Blanket

Design project scarf

And I think that’s enough for now. There’s quite a few other projects on the list (they’re actually all on my Ravelry project page if you wanna be nosy), but those are the top. That doesn’t mean I’ll focus on them in that order. Granny Cheyne isn’t good purse knitting but the July socks are for example.

Anyways, I hope everyone has a good weekend. I’m hanging out with a college friend tomorrow afternoon and then on Sunday there’s a family dinner for an uncle’s birthday. 🙂

PS: Did anyone else notice that Ravelry changed their little logo for the browser tab yesterday?

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One thought on “It’s BAAAaaaaaack”

Yes! I noticed the change in the browser tab logo! I will have to get used to it. I love how you are focused on finishing projects, but still have several going. I may have to make a “Shawl of Doom”, myself, someday. 🙂